


Broken

by entanglednow



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blindness, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-12
Updated: 2013-02-12
Packaged: 2017-11-29 01:19:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/681060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's three steps from the bottom of the stairs to the kitchen doorway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken

It's three steps from the bottom of the stairs to the kitchen doorway. That sounds simple enough. But the thing is, a step isn't always a step. A confident 'one foot in front of the other,' step is nothing like the shuffling 'I'm afraid I'm going to smash my face on something,' bullshit steps that Stiles is working with now. Someone should have told him that. Someone should have mentioned that.

The thing about this - about being - about _this_ , is that when you're not sure where the hell you are, you can't just open your eyes. You can't check where everything is, or turn on a light. You screw this up and suddenly you're standing in your own hallway with no freakin' clue where anything else is. You're stuck waving your arms around like a crazy person until you hit wall, and even then you're never entirely sure which wall you're going to get. Or where it goes. Back upstairs, kitchen, living room, Narnia?

Stiles is all for waving his arms around to make a point, it's always been his go-to way of dealing with werewolves, who're on the whole usually one step away from making a bad decision (so by his count he pulls it out at least once a day.) But now he can't even see if anyone's paying attention., and that shit's just embarrassing.

Scott keeps texting him, which is fucking hilarious. Even when it's not, even when it's deeply, deeply tragic. Even when the little message tone makes Stiles want to fling the damn thing across the room until it hits _something_ , and smashes into a billion pieces. Somehow it's still funny. He thinks he might have a problem because he's finding a lot of things funny now. The guy who'd come to see him afterwards had talked a lot about the anger, the grief, the need to blame someone and rage against the unfairness of it all. Like he hasn't ever read a psych textbook. Blah, blah, blah, healthy reactions. He already has that shit checked off. 

But the man hadn't mentioned anything about how Stiles suddenly feels like he's in on the joke. He's not sure if that's going to end well. Probably not.

Though yesterday was the first time that his insistence that the werewolves all wore freakin' bells had pulled out the dead silence that it had done. You could have smashed the atmosphere with a mallet. Or crashed a car into it. It's hard to be the comic relief when no one wants to laugh at you.

Still, at least Derek now feels compelled to make noise, like he exists in real life, rather than in some shadowy netherworld full of internal angst and hair gel.

"Shut the window. Do you have any idea how long it takes me to get over there and make sure the curtain isn't in the damn thing."

There's the soft thud of Derek doing as he's told without complaint.

The world really is hilarious.

Derek just hovers in the background after that, like a home invasion that had suddenly had an attack of conscience.

"So what do you need?" Stiles slaps his hands on the desk, his laptop is still sitting there, because he hasn't thrown it against anything yet. Not that he isn't tempted right now, it's a very real itch in his fingers. To just pick it up and hurl it, until he hears the crack of plastic and the shower of keys hitting the floor. The surface is cold under his fingers. He makes a show of opening it up. "I'm sure I can make a stab at helping you out. Is it up the right way? I can't tell."

There's the slow tread of boots, and then the lid closes under the pressure of Derek's hand.

"No research then." Stiles shoves his chair back, surprised when he doesn't hit Derek, who must have been leaning out of the way. "Have you come to threaten me with your very special glares? Because I'm telling you, you're really going to have to make more of an effort, since I can't -" Stiles waves a hand in front of his face. Though he doesn't even know if Derek's looking at him - can't know if Derek's looking at him.

"Stiles." Derek's voice is weirdly loud, and much closer than Stiles was expecting. Because Derek can't exactly change the habit of a lifetime in a month, right? But Stiles doesn't like that voice, he doesn't want to hear that tone.

"It's fine," Stiles says, too fast, because he really doesn't want to have this conversation. "It's cool. Lets not do the thing, ok? Where we pretend it's all fine. It's clearly not. I was hard enough work before. So I'm going to save you the trouble. So we had that conversation already and it's all done. We're not -"

The pressure of Derek's hands on his shoulders squeezes all the air out of his throat.

"I don't want to be done." 

"You want a lot of things you don't get to have," Stiles points out, scraping right along that line, tempted to slip over it and draw blood, shoulders too tense. But Derek hears something different, or maybe he's ignoring it. Because he's closer.

Derek's jacket creaks quietly, and Stiles thinks the weight against his temple is Derek's forehead, rush of air just to the left of his ear.

"I don't want to be done," he says again. "You don't get to decide for me."

Stiles jerks his shoulders up, but Derek just tightens his grip.

"What if I don't want to any more." Stiles pushes, that's what he does. He pushes until things break, until he can prove that everything will break in the end.

He's left adrift for as long as it takes Derek to shove the chair back, lean down into his space. He nearly pulls out of the kiss, it's too careful, it's too much, and it's closer than he's let anyone since this happened. But Derek just fists a hand in his too-short hair and kisses him until he kisses back.

Because when it comes down to it, Derek's been broken already.


End file.
